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Published: March 17th 2004
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My limited experience of American motels has led me to deduce thus: Their exterior often betrays the interior decor. From the outside they look like they do in the movies, stuck in a pleasing 1970's time warp which fits in with the whole road trip experience very nicely thank you. But once you enter the experience is surprisingly gentrified. It's almost like stopping off at your Grandmothers. That is to say that everything is very tidy, floral patterns are plentiful and there will be things like doilies and brass door knobs that give it an oddly European feel.
Our motel in Santa Barbara was very typical of this. Breakfast was taken in an area that would not have seemed out of place in a typical English Bed & Breakfast. We know this because despite us all over sleeping by about an hour, there was no way we could possibly face hitting the road until we had taken time to sort our heads out over unsatisfyingly healthy breakfast. Ostensibly we were hungover but more in retrospect we were probably still pissed. I forced down fruit and coffee before handing in the keys and packing up 'the beast'. Across the road from our
Motel I noticed a park with one of those cages for practising your baseball pitching in - the American equivalent of cricket nets. I took a picture.
We packed what beer was left and headed to the shop for crisps and water. It was about 10:00 by the time we finally hit the road which wasn't bad going considering.
Driving through LA to the sounds of the Byrds, HOLLYWOOD visible on the hillside, it's all perfectly iconic. The thermometer is showing 30 and it's not even midday. Furtunately the Sedan's air conditioning seems to take it in it's stride. The traffic is heavy but flows steadily and we make it through the milieu of Los Angeles in reasonable time. After that the road adopts a long but shallow rake all the way to the edge of the desert. The soil glares a bright white but once you get over the ridge things settle down in colour and there is the tangible sense that you are well on your way. Eberyone seems to be in a hurry, especially the gargantuan HGV's that hurtle past and break neck speed.
The Mojave desert doesn't seem as quintessentially 'desert like' when you drive
through it but I have seen my photographs since and it does. I guess the sheer load of traffic detracts from the impact at the time.
We stop at Barstow for some serious food. Denny's wins hands down and I eat a lot. So much so that it prompts two trips to the toilet whilst Charlie attempts to phone on ahead and book a room. We had been warned by the US Marine in Monterey to book ahead but we hadn't listened. As before we expected to just rock up to the first place we found and get a room, no hassle at all. How wrong we could be. After phoning at least 10 different places we finally find a place near the old strip with spaces. And so we hit the road again.
It's about 5:30 and we have Vegas in our sights. Nathan is seriously monged by now and we still have to drop the hire car off once we've booked into our motel. Unfortunately for Nathan nothing has prepared him for the automotive morass that is to come.
After being tooted en masse at the left turn leading up to our motel we attempt to book in. This takes over an hour because the receptionist seems to be on a mixture of LCD and Valium. This seriously does our collective head in, especially after phoning through to the Car Hire people I'm told that if we are late we will have to pay for an extra day. Once explained that we are actually in Vegas as we speak (7:00pm) and we should be no more than 30 minutes late (1 hour) the lady starts to behave more reasonably.
The car hire place lies south of Vegas, unlike our motel which lies north. Nathan's going to have to deal with Vegas traffic for a second time in a day. After Christ knows how many miles driving done in 4 days the poor guy's at the end of his tether. He instructs us that we must navigate exclusively and he will merely turn when he is told - quite literally he means. We tell him to turn left. On to the highway. He turns left. Before we've reached the highway. An explosion of panic reels him back in and now we've got the measure of just how mashed he really is we direct him the rest of the journey without further incident.
From here we get a cab back to the strip. It's almost ten and I'm concerned that the evening might be destined to fall flat. We are dropped off outside some lurid behemoth of a casino, go inside and sit down with a beer. No sooner than we find a seat than the stage above the bar erupts into a vulgar explosion of music and dance. The lead singer starts prancing around the concourse and if you're quick you can catch your dumb founded faces relayed as they are onto the big screen above the stage by a cameraman who follows this modern day harlequins every move.
It's depressing but not as much so as the lions they keep trussed up in a faux-jungle landscape. This place must surely be hell and it's not cheap either. So we grab some pizza and then head out into this mad night.
The longer you stay in Vegas the more apparent it's seediness becomes. Not it's kitsch - that's apparent from the start - but it's grimy under belly. Stag nights, adverts for strip joints covering the floor, groups of young drunken kids making a racket, anybody and everybody whooping around the black jack table. It's ludicrous but you knew that anyway right? Many of the smaller casinos which open up onto the street frontage offer bottled beer for a dollar or free vodka slush puppy's, anything to grab your attention.
We head onto Gillie's which promises naked mud wrestling. Alas by the time we get there it's over but we stay anyway because the beer is cheap.
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